With the parties both highly polarized and highly competitive, the candidate’s electability is the only thing that voters and caucus goers should consider in deciding which candidate to support. In my last blog, I concluded that Fred Thompson was the logical candidate for Republicans to turn to this year. He stood the best chance of satisfying the Republican base and being able to reach out to swing voters.

So who would be the most electable of the Democratic Party’s hopefuls?

Hillary Clinton has a sizeable lead in the national polls among Democrats, but more than half of the Democrats do not support her and almost half of the public have negative impressions of her. Her unfavorable ratings are higher than any other candidate in either party—and this is after years of preparation for the run and repositioning herself with a somewhat more temperate liberal voting record in the Senate.

The major option to Senator Clinton is Senator Obama. He has acquitted himself quite well in the campaign, and though he trails Senator Clinton in the national polls, is running about even with her in the first few contests. He is the fresh face on the Democratic side in a year in which “change” would seem to be a particularly attractive campaign theme.
Though it is dangerous to read much into the head-to-head preference polls at this point, one cannot help noticing that Obama runs about four to seven points stronger than Clinton against the five candidates in the Republican top-tier.

Though John Edwards trails both Clinton and Obama in the national polls of Democrats, he also fares better in the head-to-head matchups than Senator Clinton, and usually better than Obama. It is unclear, however, how much if any of these leads would stand up through a campaign that highlighted the more strident class-politics turn Edwards has taken this year.

Then there is the thousand pound gorilla in the room that no one wants to notice. When was the last time that either major party nominated either a woman or a black man—much less elected a woman or a black man?

It speaks well for the nation that this does not appear to be even a whispered issue at this point, but it would be naive to think that it just won’t matter to voters. There is always a “first” in including underrepresented groups in the nation, but it is not often that the first nominated is also the first elected. Al Smith was the first Catholic to be the nominee of a major party, but it was another 32 years before the first Catholic was elected President. From this political-sociological perspective, Edwards would seem to be the most electable Democrat.

The electability issue, however, is complicated this year for Democrats by the fact that Senator Clinton was the first lady and has been the presumptive frontrunner in the party for some time. Speculation about her presidential ambitions were discussed during her husband’s term.

The Case for Hillary.

Better than forty percent of the Democrats continue to support her nomination. The point is that there may be a substantial cost to the party’s unity of not nominating Hillary. At this point, can the Democrats really turn to any candidate other than Hillary without dispirited Clinton fans sitting on their thumbs in the general election?

Although both Obama and Edwards would be disappointed by not winning the nomination, neither could consider it a real rebuke. Neither could have expected to win it. I cannot see Hillary going so quietly. She survived the unprecedented public humiliation of her husband’s “indiscretions.” She toughed out the embarrassing health care reform fiasco of her husband’s first term. She is tough and single-minded in her ambition.

Perhaps a series of primary defeats would change things, but I would guess that things would have to get pretty rough to get to that point and this would hurt the Democratic Party’s chances in November. As a result, despite her very high negatives and all the baggage of her husband’s administration, Senator Clinton may be the most electable of the Democratic Party’s field at this point.

Democratic primary voters and caucus attendees might just want to accept the inevitable sooner rather than later.